Soon I will be a very happy money-less girl who is working on publishing her second novel. I’m dreading and super excited to start the self-publishing my second novel. Cross your fingers that good things happen!

Mandi Lynn is the young adult author of her debut novel, Essence. Beginning to write the story when she was only thirteen years old, after three and a half years of hard work, Essence was published and in print. To graduate in 2014, meanwhile Mandi goes to a vocational high school where she takes cosmetology alongside writing novels and doing regular schoolwork. Mandi can now be found on YouTube hosting YA Ink—a series of videos about writing and publishing—and sharing her journey as a writer.

So before I started the process of self-publishing my book, I had money saved up to buy my first car. Sadly the car had to put off for a few months, but I was able to jump right into publishing my book. Please note that for a long time I was working every day right after school. Not all teenagers are able to make this kind of money and I don’t take it for granted. My parents didn’t pay for my publishing; however they did lend my money to buy the 100 copies of my book because at this point, like I said, I can barley pay for gas to go to work. It’s a big finial decision to self-publish the RIGHT way, but if you believe in yourself it will be worth it!

I bet you’re all wondering this: how much does it cost to self-publish? Well, you have two options in my options: the lazy way and the right way. The lazy way means all you do is put together your book, order it from Creatspace, and BAM you’re done and published! Or you could do it the right way. This means hire an editor for structure edits, hire another person for proof reading edits, making a breath-taking cover and hiring someone to do that if you need to. It also means you need to order advanced reader copies to send to reviews and you also have to keep in mind how much it will cost to ship those books to a reviewer! The numbers add up…

Before you can write the perfect book that everyone will love (which, by the way, is not possible) you must revise the perfect novel. Let’s come to terms with the word perfect. If you can understand what that means for your book you will have a sane mind and won’t go crazy. There are many things you have to keep in mind while you edit. Things like inner monologue, deleting a lot of things that will make you cringe, and making sure you SHOW and don’t TELL.